Katherine McKenna

Katherine McKenna is a Ph.D. Candidate specializing in the history of early modern Italy, women, and gender at Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation, tentatively entitled “Breaking Silence: Women’s Radicalization of the Querelle des Femmes in Venice, 1550-1650,” explores the movement of respectable Venetian women into print and the rise of social criticism in the local debate on women in connection with civic myth, state politics, and the relocation of female writing from bordello to casa. To complete this project, Katherine has been awarded a 2018-2019 Graduate Student Fellowship from the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.

Katherine is also a recipient of research support from the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science, the Vanderbilt History Department, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Katherine has presented on her research at the Newberry Library, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, and the Renaissance Society of America. She is excited to announce that her first article, “Women in the Garden: The Decameron Reimagined in Moderata Fonte’s Il merito delle donne” is coming out with Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal in Spring 2019.

Katherine received her B.A. from Emory University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She studies with Professor William Caferro.